Raising Capital

 

Raising capital as a startup can be one of the most intimidating and discouraging necessities of a founder's journey. Especially as women, considering we represent over 40% of all entrepreneurs in the country, yet only secure 2.8% of total startup investment.

This GLOW session was led by Alaina Hartley, Chief of Staff & Investor at Greycroft, a $2B+ growth fund that celebrates early investments in Bumble, Goop, The RealReal, Venmo, Scopely, and dozens of other unicorns. Prior to joining Greycroft, Alaina worked at Bain & Company, where she consulted across Bain’s private equity, technology & media, and retail practices. Previously, Alaina drove go-to-market and brand strategy initiatives for Snap Inc.’s first hardware product, Spectacles, earning fourteen nominations and six wins at the 2016 Cannes Lions awards.

Alaina shared tips for pitching VCs, making an impression, handling objections, and navigating unconscious gender bias in the male-dominated venture world. The session provided specific examples and tactical advice for how you can rethink your pitch and improve your fundraising skills.

“Manifest success & be confident in yourself. If you believe it, other people will too.” - Alaina Hartley

GLOW NOTES

Ask yourself "is my product a vitamin or essential medication?" (it should be the latter) & build your pitch around that

  • Perfecting the pitch

    • 7-10 slides for the intro deck

    • Lead w/ numbers - objective data about the value of what you're doing and why the investor should be a part of it, then jump into vision and story (example "$10B market, 5 companies going after it, only 1% penetrated")

    • Orient conversation on future performance - this is something men do really well (example "90% week over week retention of 1k beta users.. We know when we roll out ABC features, we're going to increase valuation by XYZ")

    • Keep the conversation high level, "here's where we are today, here's where we'll be in 5 years and 10 years"... don't get too in the weeds on the product today. Investing in seed round is a long-term play (Greycroft forecasts avg. of 10 years)

    • Focus on specific milestones for the round rather than use of funds

  • Great resources

    • AllRaise - OG female investors, templates, docs, FB groups, mentoring

    • Launch with Goldman Sachs - great resources

    • Venture Deals by Brad Feld is a great book - terms, tradeoffs, VC, founders experience

    • NVCA standard docs for priced rounds

    • YC standardized templates for safe docs

    • Add diversity rider to term sheet (lead will help you fill the round w/ under-represented investors)

    • Spend money on a great lawyer!!!

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Bhaji IlluminatiComment